SJ, I realize you are not a fan of Toks. Just bear in mind that anything that helps Toks helps all other competing approaches. So Toks will always be in near dead last place. Great science projects though. The other point was that net power is only important if the fine print engineering has real s...

Tokamaks have a size and first wall problem that lurks in the fine print where the real world lives. No Tokamak gets anywhere close to beta = 1. Some Toks will look good but only when compared to other Toks. Toks have really good lobbyists and high paid cheerleaders. The aforementioned high tempera...

Break even is worthless, if its not time 6 or better it will never be commercially viable for major powerproduction. Each ton of coal consumed at an electric power plant produces about 2000 Kilowatt hours of electricity average delivered coal price to the electric power sector was $42.58 per ton, e...

Ok, if you say so. Please list the fusion projects that have achieved break even - in the order of net-gain. Thank you. JT-60 would have if they had used D+T instead of D+D. JET could also have done so, if that had been a research goal, which is has not. Again, right now most of the bigger projects...

sandbagging I think it more likely that they are exaggerating in order to keep funding going. (IMHO). I would say that the opposite is true for Helion, actually. David Kirtley has been a lot more reserved with his predictions in recent years (also see the article). The 2020 estimate is my predictio...

Oh, guess I just needed to read Slipjack’s link: 50M. I have to say TAE’s plan for a net power machine by 2020 is the most tangible hope to date I’ve had for fusion. Almost enough to make me start thinking this is actually happening... Well, there is also Helion, which has a (roughly) 24 month cycl...

Looks like Tokamak Energy may be the first ones to demonstrate break even, if their current timeline for 2020 holds up. JET might still beat them to it, if they demonstrate net gain in the next series of T+D tests. There is also JT-60 that might do it, though with D+D only, if I understand correctly...

Helion is currently building their next test device. The next device after that is expected to demonstrated net energy gain. They have been moving through test builds rather quickly, but net gain demonstration will probably not happen before 2020. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/commercial-fusion-vent...

Provided tests with Normal go well, TAE will start construction of their net gain machine in 2020 according to what TAE Technologies CEO Steven Specker said at the Seattle breakfast session on commercial fusion ventures, organized by the CleanTech Alliance: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/commercial-f...

I take a slightly different view of this conceptual machine. Yes, there are several other FRC concepts under active study but as far as I know. none of them have actually generated power beyond, or even at "Break-Even." If this huge machine were to be constructed and shown to easily achie...

What matters is cost, not size. It is still microscopic compared to a wind power park of the same power. Not so sure about that. With a large vessel like this and D+T fusion the running costs will be quite high since large pieces of first wall will have to be replaced frequently. Plus, there are ot...

I swear I had a little tear in my eye when David Bowie came on! And then the dual(?) double(?) whatever two booster synchronous landing! I am not easily taken by emotion but that was just epic! Sucks about the 3rd core landing, but as always, they will apply these lessons for next time and make it b...

The fact that there has been no federal-law mandated mishap investigation led by NASA, required when any space vehicle or launch is lost, seems to back that up. This was not a NASA payload. It was a DOD payload. So I do not think that NASA would be investigating this. There was a congressional hear...